1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a dry-training apparatus for simulating crawl swimming movements, with an endless traction member guided over deflection rollers that have a braking device, and a plurality of handles mounted on the traction member and spaced apart from one another for moving the traction member in alternation by two hands of a user located on a supporting element disposed above the traction member.
In a device for muscle training for swimmers and particularly for simulating a crawl motion, which is already known from German Published, Non-Prosecuted Patent Application DE 42 18 478 A1, two traction members, each in the form of a quarter circle and guided around two turning points, taper toward one another at an acute angle in front of the user resting on a support surface. The traction members are provided with a loading device in order to present a resistance force to the motion of the user's arms. They each include two side by side chains or belts, joined by many successive handles, which are supported on the upper and lower sides or strands on adjustable quarter-circle support rollers.
Although it is possible, with that dry training apparatus for crawl swimming, to strengthen muscle parts which are especially stressed in that type of swimming, nevertheless the resistance forces when the swimmer moves in water, which moreover depend on the swimming speed, cannot be simulated with that apparatus. Due to the alternating actuation of one traction member or the other, the traction member must repeatedly be put into motion from virtually the state of repose, as if the swimmer, each time he or she pulls with his or her arm, were just beginning to swim. As a result, overloads on the muscles and joints cannot be precluded. In that sense, the apparatus is also unsuitable for exact simulation of crawling or for teaching and training crawling, since it is left to the user when he or she will begin his or her next arm pull, and where on the traction member, which has many handles on it, he or she will begin. Moreover, the motion that can be executed with that training device, where the arm is always extended, does not match the actual posture of the arms in crawl swimming.
With the crawl swimming training apparatus described in Soviet Inventor's Certificate 597 376 as well, which is formed like a conveyor belt of an endless traction member with a rectilinear upper side or strand, the actual path of motion of the arms in crawl swimming, in which as is well-known each hand during its exertion of force is guided in the water in a long half-oval below the body, cannot be simulated. Moreover, with that apparatus as well, coordinating the sequence of motion of both arms or the frequency of arm motions is left to the judgment of the athlete, who drives the belt at an arbitrary point and at arbitrary time intervals.